


At once I blossom green and wither brown

by doctornerdington



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: BAMF Mary Morstan, F/F, French Characters, Prostitution, a land so wild and savage 'verse, post script
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-25 03:13:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12521672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctornerdington/pseuds/doctornerdington
Summary: A snippet of Mary's life following the events of A Land So Wild and Savage. As you may be pleased to recall, she has fled England for Paris, where she participated in the the gaolbreak of two imprisoned French suffragettes, Jeanne Deroin and Pauline Roland -- and then vanished entirely.





	At once I blossom green and wither brown

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Restricted Work] by [doctornerdington](https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctornerdington/pseuds/doctornerdington). Log in to view. 



_Je vis, je meurs : je me brule et me noye._  
        _J’ay chaut estreme en endurant froidure:_  
_La vie m’est et trop molle et trop dure._  
_J’ay grans ennuis entremeslez de joye:_  
_Tout à un coup je ris et je larmoye,_  
_Et en plaisir maint grief tourment j’endure:_  
_Mon bien s’en va, et à jamais il dure:_  
_Tout en un coup je seiche et je verdoye._  
_Ainsi Amour inconstamment me meine:_  
_Et quand je pense avoir plus de douleur,_  
_Sans y penser je me treuve hors de peine._  
_Puis quand je croy ma joye estre certeine,_  
_Et estre au haut de mon desiré heur,_  
_Il me remet en mon premier malheur_.

_\-- Louise Labé_

_  
_

**Pigalle, Paris (October 1852)**

She wakes to raucous laughter in the street, unsteady footsteps on the stair.

Giselle, then, or Annalise returning home. It must be late. A man’s heavier tread follows up the stairs. Beside her, Jeanne curses quietly, sighs, rolls against her side. A pool of warmth in the tiny room. A door above them opens and slams shut, cutting off whispered giggles. “Someone’s had a good night,” she murmurs.

In the light trickling in from the gas streetlamp, Jeanne smiles, whispers “je le crois, oui.” With a fingertip, she traces Mary’s lip lightly: first the top, then the bottom. “Une bonne nuit,” she prompts.

“Une bonne nuit,” Mary dutifully repeats. She is a child learning the world. She is Marie now. “Je le crois.”

Jeanne laughs, burrows her face into her throat where she’s warm and soft and tender. She breathes and breathes and breathes. A sleepy glow begins to take them over, as it sometimes has in the past few weeks. Since they found this room and the fear receded a little. Since they began sharing a bed.

Pauline snores in her chair by the window. Something’s happened to her, inside: something Mary’s rudimentary French can’t follow. She won’t lie down anymore; barely speaks. She whimpers and twitches in her sleep. Jeanne sighs. Rises and wraps a blanket around Pauline’s shoulders, careful not to wake her. Comes back to bed.

They curl together again, listening through paper-thin walls to the noises of the women in the other rooms. Coughs and groans. Snores. Sighs. Some of them, Mary knows, are awake too, lying abed, listening for the ugly grunts of the john upstairs fucking their friend. She admires – quite breathlessly admires – the honesty of the exchange: he need not pretend to value her, nor she to respect him.

These are the whores she knows: Annalise, who does a brisk trade and sends the proceeds away to pay for her daughter’s school. Giselle, who always wears ribbons in her hair. The sisters on the third floor who bring home jambon beurre, frites, pigeonneau, bottereaux, vin de table, and host debauched picnics on their threadbare turkish carpet, smoking endless thin cigarettes and laughing too loudly. Océane, with the solemn little boy and the lover who visits erratically and weeps when he leaves. The girl who sleeps on the second-floor landing, baby tucked against her chest. Élodie, who screams in the night when she’s not had enough drink. There are many more she has not met. It sometimes seems that all of Paris is a brothel. It is the perfect place for women to disappear: men never look at their whores – not to see them.

“Marie,” Jeanne whispers against her ear. Finds her hand in the dark and traces circles on the palm. “Ta main.”

“Ma main,” Mary repeats.

The tenement reeks of bodies, of piss and sex and old food and mice. Last week, the sound of a single slap echoing through the hall brought an army of whores banging down Océane’s door, escorting a red-faced and cursing john out into the street. Mary looked at the women in shock as they streamed back in, nonchalant as anything. She was overcome, dizzy, as if with vertigo. The world tilted and she shuddered, even, with a sort of vast, aching relief. She need not perform virtue; need not wield it like the double-edged blade that it is. There are wounds, but she has not made them.

Océane’s cheek was hot and bright red where the man had hit her: a brand in the shape of an open hand. She’d laughed and said that she’d had worse, but her hands shook when she reached for her tea.

Mary thinks, sometimes, that she’s been under water her entire life, and suddenly she is breaking the surface.

Her breath stutters in her throat. Jeanne’s teasing touch has stirred her: she catches her hand and brings it to her mouth, kissing her palm, then each finger in turn. “Tes… doigts?” she asks.

Jeanne bites her lip and nods, slowly. She moves with new intent. “Mes doigts.”

Lazily, they hear the man finish above them. A few murmured voices, the door opens and closes once more and the man clomps down the stair. Jeanne is stroking her back, her arms. Slowly. Endlessly. The glow between them smolders, intensifies. Cupping her breast through her chemise; tracing little patterns on her stomach. Mary shivers with sudden, urgent want. Searches again for Jeanne’s hand. Takes it in her own then presses, presses, presses it to her.

Jeanne’s breath is warm on her neck. Sa main, ses doigts. Kindle sparks. Spin magic.

* * * * *

When Mary wakes again, Jeanne is breathing softly beside her and sunlight is filtering in through the grimy window, a cold trickle. Pauline has shaken off her blanket and returned to her post at the window, silent watch resumed. None of them knows exactly what they’re watching for, but after all, they made a mockery of the Sûreté, of French justice, of – men. It was dreadful, exhilarating, miraculous. Someone will surely wish to punish them.

Mary inhales deeply; stretches her arms high over her head, arching her back like a bow. She thought she should feel different – afterwards. She thought it inconceivable – intolerable – that she could remain the same. But these are still her hands, and this still her belly, her legs, her lungs. Hands that loved John now love Jeanne. An English tongue now bent to French.

The street below – never truly silent, even in the small hours of the night – is now clattering with life of a different sort.

Mary rises. Pauline has left a basin of cold water on the table: she washes herself quickly and dresses. They have money enough for a few more weeks, between them. After that?

She sighs and joins Pauline at the window and takes her arm, chafing her chilblained hand between her own.

In a month’s time, maybe two, Paris will have forgotten about them. Not even the brigade des mœurs will concern itself with such lowly creatures.

Such is their debasement; such their freedom.

Such is their grief, and such their joy.


End file.
